Monday, October 17, 2005

Rain to Snow Day Memories

It has not stopped raining since Friday, and today is Sunday.Rain and gray skies have a certain beauty. It is deliciously cozy sitting inside, hearing the howling winds, the rain on the roof, whilst sipping a hot chocolate. Or, after being outside, you come in, put some warm and comfy clothes on and curl up with a good book or, even better, a warm person.Rainy days remind me a lot of my family and when I was younger. My brother and I would race across the living room floor, play monopoly, probably paint or make something, and then dance in my room. Sometimes, we would get cabin fever, or so we were told by our parents, whom we were probably driving crazy. I remember our monopoly games, or should I say our never-ending monopoly games. Everyone knows that monopoly is a long game, so whenever my brother and I would tire of it, we would carefully move the board to the corner of the piano room. We always planned to take it up another time. Sometimes we did, other times we forgot, and other times, the cat would run over it, ruining our money and deeds. This naturally ensued me freaking out at the cat, and then whining to my parents and brother. My brother didn't care all that much, and my mom said that I had probably forgotten about the game until now. Again, she was right.Many teenagers when they reach "that age" believe that their parents are rarely right. Sometimes, this is the truth, but in my case, my mother was nearly always right. She was amazingly accurate with snow days, the fantasy of every child. When the weather predicted a lot of snow or some ice, my brother and I would immediately go to her and ask her if it was going to be a snow day tomorrow. She always knew."Hmm, no," she would say after only a short pause."What! Mom, no, that's not fair!", we'd whine. "Are you sure?""Yup, positive," she would say smiling."Awww, Mom!" My brother and I would walk away groaning.And sure enough, the next morning, my brother and I would wake up, stay in bed, and pray for the slimest chance that the radios would announce the cancellation of buses or our bus would call. They never did. Somehow, she always knew when there would be snow days or not.Of course, other times, it would be as such:

"Mom, will there be a snow day tomorrow?""Oh, I'm pretty sure. I'm taking tomorrow off. If the roads aren't too bad, we'll go into Morrisburg and buy Baba some shoes." Naturally, we'd cheer and hoot. And that was that.Only once, I remember her really not being sure. Again, after hearing the weather report for some ice, my brother and I rushed to ask my mother. Much to our surprise, she didn't know."I really can't tell. I'll have to say maybe or maybe not," she told us. We were really confused. How could she not know? She left it at that. We went to sleep, hoping for the day off.The next morning, we listened to the radio. I always had 93.9 Kool FM wake me up, whilst my parents always had on CBC. The weirdest thing? On one station, they had cancelled buses; on the other one, they hadn't.Umm... what?At about 7:30, the bus called for my brother, telling him ten minutes before his bus was supposed to come that the buses were indeed cancelled. He whooped for joy, but that didn't really clear up anything for me. I was in my first year at high school, and he was still in elementary school. We were on different school boards.So, since my brother wasn't going to school, I really didn't feel like going, so I decided to stay home, on account of bus confusion. Also, this helped out my parents, as my brother and sister weren't old enough to stay home on their home. So, the three of us are just at home when I look out the window at 8:30. I see my bus, picking up kids at the corner. So, there was school? I was confused.Apparently, it was a confused snow day. Half of the buses picked up kids and half didn't. Less than half the school was at school. The kids who were at school were like, why the heck am I here? and the teachers were like, crap. Many kids ended up getting picked up by friends or parents at lunch. You must be aware that my middle-of-nowhere school is surrounded with cows and two cemeteries, so it's not like we could leave all that easily.So, in summary, this shows that the only time that my mother was unsure, so were the buses and school boards. I tell you, she has magical powers. We were always impressed.

Speaking of cancelled school days, I may have no classes tomorrow, due to part of the school and bridge being flooded.

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About Me

An avid lover of bananas, travelling, and being on stage, Zaz takes extreme pleasure in speaking in at least three different languages. She refuses to wear jeans and fears ordering pizza over the telephone.